Bonner ‘Doing Well’ After Four-Hour Heart Surgery

--Soviet dissident Yelena Bonner underwent more than four hours of successful bypass surgery to increase the blood flow to her heart and relieve chest pain. “The operation went very well and she is now doing well in intensive care,” Martin Bander, a spokesman at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said. The wife of Andrei D. Sakharov, the dissident Soviet physicist and Nobel Prize winner who is in internal exile in Gorky, also promised her doctors before surgery that she would finally give up smoking. Bander said surgeons used “an unusual number” of arteries--five from a leg and one from the chest wall--to increase the blood supply to Bonner’s heart. The patient, 62, had been suffering from angina because her arteries were blocked and the blood supply to her heart was therefore diminished. Bonner, who hopes to telephone her husband once she is out of intensive care, will remain in the hospital 8 to 10 days, Bander said.

--Suzette Charles’ Miss America reign was only two months, but it gave her what she wanted--exposure. Charles, who finished Vanessa Williams’ term in 1984 after Williams was overexposed in Penthouse, says she is keeping busy with singing and lecturing appearances and television shows. “I wanted exposure,” she said during a speaking engagement in Nashville, Tenn. “I needed to show people on a national level that I exist, that I have talent. I went from a regular college student and now I’m a personality. It makes me feel very good to be the star.” Charles said she is talking with country music singer Charley Pride about organizing a record contract. “I’d love to be another Barbara Mandrell,” she said.

--Some U.S. businessmen are spelling detente “dzhaz.” They are the first importers of Russian jazz. Steve Boulay and Ted Everts of Wethersfield, Conn. in 1984 signed what Soviet officials said was the first contract by a U.S. business to produce Soviet jazz albums for distribution in America. The first fruits of that agreement have now arrived at the Integrity ‘N Music store in Wethersfield. The five albums featured performers ranging from a jazz-rock fusion band to a folk guitarist. “Jazz is suited for bridging the gap between the superpowers,” Everts said.

--Veteran airline pilot Warren Walters celebrated his 40th birthday with 40 sky dives in six hours, capping his last jump with sips of champagne. “Sky diving has been a big part of my life,” said Walters, of Camas, Wash., a pilot for Horizon Airlines. After the 40 jumps, his friends inducted him into the “Parachutists Over Phorty Society” or “Pops” for short.